it's not a bird not quite a plane or it's a drone and in recent years the u.s. has relied heavily on the drone program to wage a war on terror around the globe so why is the mainstream media finally starting to pay attention to this top secret program and what do we really know about drones will question more next. and there's one one million dollar reward is offered for the capture of a former l.a. police officer accused of going on a killing spree the suspect says he was falsely fired and has information about wrongdoings within the department we'll take a look at this case and his claims just ahead. most congress and president obama have said immigration reform must happen here in the u.s. but will the plan include a guest worker program will shine a light on a dark history of the past worker programs coming up.

it's monday february eleventh eight pm in washington d.c. i'm megan lopez and you're watching r.t. well it's not a bird not quite a plane it's an unmanned aerial vehicle that's dominating newspaper headlines cable coverage and confirmation hearings these days but it's not necessarily the surveillance aspects that has everyone riled up if the cold blooded characteristics of this machine that has the networks talking. officials inside the justice department have drafted a document saying the president has the legal authority to use drones the american government is launching a new war some of this country's seventy five hundred drones may be about to take off with new targets in their sights the secrecy lack of transparency and lack of oversight of the drone program the issue of drones and extrajudicial killings has become so mainstream that even former defense secretary robert gates is speaking

out about the ways to make this program more palatable over the weekend he came out in support of a special independent court to evaluate the necessity of any given drone strike meanwhile lawmakers and civilians alike are demanding more oversight for the drone program almost ten years after it started so for latest on this issue i'm joined by marcy wheeler she's an investigative reporter at mt will dot net hey there marcy so let's start with this this coverage that we're seeing with the media why so much interest in drones now because the administration has finally released white paper that shows their rationale behind killing an american citizen on where a law in september of two thousand and eleven congress had been asking for memos that the way people was based and i guess to pressure or to alleviate pressure depending on who you ask to get those memos in advance of john brennan's confirmation hearing last thursday the way paper was leaked and the logic behind

the drone targeting or actually frankly the targeted killing program because it's not specific to drones it's a little bit shocking when one of the things that's coming out of the. case is that his son wanted to represent him and the fact is that we don't know who exactly is on this targeted killing list and not knowing that it makes it so that there cannot be accurate representation talk about some of the legal aspects of the drone program and also the kill list. well to clarify his son was actually killed so he's a sixteen year old american citizen who was killed two weeks after his father he went out to look for his father and while he was in the vicinity of potentially q.a.p. people he also was killed and then the thing about i think the most shocking thing about the white paper that came out last week is the definition of what makes someone targetable which is based not on whether you've committed a crime but whether you are considered an imminent threat as determined by

a senior level official doesn't have to be elected doesn't have to be senate confirmed can be john brennan who's just i got it i mean very clearly experience but obama picked him but didn't have any influence from congress even there actually as senator angus king as one of the people that has been speaking out against a strong program and he said quote that the president can act as a prosecutor judge jury and executioner but you're saying that it's more than just a president that really anybody that has this type of control can launch these drone strikes the way the white papers written it doesn't have to be the president there's no requirement that even the president be involved there's no requirement that congress be informed ahead of time and and there's reason to believe that even the gang of four those the leaders of the intelligence committees in congress didn't get detailed information about the locky killing much less this marathon and

abdelrahman killing so there's almost no oversight and no required oversight as for these memos and senator king is right that that this basically makes. very ill defined people within the white house the judge jury executioner of americans without having to prove anything about them and senator rand paul has also been adamant quintic critics excuse me of the strong program and i want to play a quick clip from him and i will come back and get your opinions. where do you stand on u.s. drones targeting american citizens who are suspected of supporting al qaeda or being involved in terrorist plots killing them without any judicial review. really troubled by their ministration there was a document leaked that says that imminent threat doesn't have to be an immediate threat someone on my staff said you know only a bunch of lawyers could say that an imminent threat doesn't have to be immediate so i'm concerned about a bunch of people from the executive branch sitting around at

a table with flash cards saying you want to kill him what do you think should we kill him or what do you think now marci obviously there's a lot of critics both you know lawmakers and also just ordinary civilians on this program but a new report by c.n.n. money shows that the u.s. has actually bought two thirds of the world's drone market up they have allocated seven point five billion dollars for the john budget so far in two thousand and thirteen so obviously this industry isn't going away what can we do to at least regulate it. well there's a drone caucus in congress which is really been pushing for a number of years to roll out not just the use of drones internationally but also domestically there they've been pushing to get the f.a.a. to prove drums and domestic air space and what is work for citizen involvement best so far has been local involvement so for example seattle was rolling out a drone program and for this and they were able to convince the police not to roll it out and really these drones haven't proven necessary or they haven't proven cost

effective they haven't proven particularly useful except in rare examples where you have a crazy act running around los angeles right but or i mean they are you on the border it's not even clear that they're the best tool to use on the border and what we need to do is get better at assessing their tools are the most effective tools probably not and we need to get a lot better at making that argument so that we can kind of push back against the people trying to make a lot of money on this now you're of course speaking of domestic drones in our domestic drone program but let's talk about a foreign drone program for the summit and what we do to non u.s. citizens abroad senator mccain actually said that he does not believe in a special court but what he does believe is that we need to take these drones out of the hands of cia agents and just put them in the hands of homeland security and the pentagon do you think that that would be an effective problem solver or would it just create more or less transparency i guess. people overestimate the degree

to which deity is more transparent than cia there's actually some forms of accountability written in for cia that don't exist for d.o.d. that said the o.d.s. job is to go out and kill people like that like it or not but that is their job where cia and one of the most troubling things about this white paper that was released last week is it was written to a large extent for the cia and the cia is supposed to operate by different rules and more importantly the cia is supposed to not break u.s. law and in the case of killing anwar lockett there's actually a lot in the u.s. that prohibits killing american citizens overseas so well i don't think moving it to d.o.d. or restricting restricting it to d.o.d. will fix the oversight problem i do think that it'll fix some of the legal problems inherent with cia doing it now are a little bit earlier today i had

a guest on his name is christopher swift and he actually was talking about droughts in the short term versus the long term and what he said was that they might help with short term counterterrorism attacks but they really hurt long term policy strategies do you think that that's an accurate description. absolutely and i think even more no one has yet that i've seen come up with a really good description of how grooms play a part in a strategy to be terrorists i think chris is somebody who's who's really come around and you know really come. with an interesting voice to say in the short term sure we're preventing terrorist from taking land in yemen for example but what next and until we into those questions about what next and frankly susan collins was one of the few people who at the hearing the other day asked that question and john brennan didn't offer i think a really compelling answer marsay are. going to have to end it there i'm sorry to

cut you off marcy wheeler investigative reporter for mt will dot net thank you for your time thanks well in case you haven't been following the case christopher dorner is a thirty three year old former u.s. navy lieutenant who served in iraq before joining the l.a.p.d. he was fired from the force in two thousand and nine and promised to extract revenge on the department for its transgressions against him he remains on the run now at a press conference this afternoon the riverside police department referred to dorner as a felon despite not yet having his day in court in fact charges have already been filed against dorner as oh he hasn't been arrested yet so that the police can apprehend him more easily throughout the country that's what these these charges did the l.a.p.d. and other nearby police agencies last week embarked on a huge manhunt for this man however in the process two separate incidents occurred where police officers fired on vehicles they claim or similar to dorner is injuring three innocent people but the vehicles weren't really that similar at all in fact

this is how the attorney of two of the victims describes it. vehicles a different color. the license plate doesn't match there's nothing there for you to start shooting people and even if the. person in question you know mr dorner is still at the given opportunity to get out you can't just start in the street street justice so is the l.a.p.d. making more of the situation even more dangerous than they have fire when their fire first and ask questions later tactics for more of the situation i was joined by independent genuine journalist running a colic i first asked her how did officers get to the identification of this man it's so wrong with these innocent victims here's his response. well i think part of the reason is because they're scared because this man is physically targeting them . so that here probably makes them more likely to fire whereas the question that

doesn't justify it of course but i think more importantly that it's the way they react is really emblematic of the way that a lot of police departments and southern california react towards towards suspects they often i mean there are so many he's not there were people are shot. before before even knowing that the police they're dealing with are people are shot just because they're just directed of doing something and oftentimes it is people of color. if this is something that a lot of police departments do i mean racial progress comes down to racial profiling and i think that it's really important to recognize that in the hunt for this man the l.a.p.d. has really shown that a lot of the criticisms this and his online media festo really do have truth in them now the festa went on to talk about a lot of things everything from temptation just everything really put something i do have to ask you is this do you think that because this man has more training

than the average american citizen the average american suspect that it necessitates or that it makes any type of exception for the type of force that they are actually using to try to find this man. well that i mean it depends it depends i mean we're not sure if they're saying that they want to capture him there has been nothing from the l.a.p.d. that i know up saying that they want to kill him but because of the way they obviously like you said shot at those innocent people who looked nothing like him because they were driving trucks that look similar to his trucks although they really didn't look that similar there is good reason to believe that if they think they see him they will kill him and that's a question that we really i think that we really need to examine and consider whether that's ok because this man hasn't been that he just he's been charged with stuff today but you have to have a trial and. i mean when somebody is considered armed and dangerous if they do pose a lethal threat police are totally justified in taking them out but yeah depends i

mean if he comes in guns blazing at least officers they have every right to kill him or to shoot to kill him right i mean i'm not sure we're questioning that but one of the things i do want to ask you do you really see this as these two incidents where three people were injured as an unfortunate mistake or as an institutional problem that really an institutional problem i mean i documented so many cases where people have been shot and sometimes killed because of course it's been used on all kinds of people mostly people of color in poor communities where you know police officers take them out and they haven't been armed and it happens all the time to something that's really consistent and you'll see it i mean among the communities of people that live in this area there's a lot of there's a lot of agreement with this with the christian. testament of the l.a.p.d. you know because this is what they're used to this kind of police violence directed at average citizens now you talked a little bit earlier about the racial profiling that you know the other say is

going on and so let's take that part that aspect of it and turn the conversation to the topic of police brutality in general within the l.a.p.d. now pretty recently in l.a. a police officer was under investigation over claims that he threatened a woman jail time if she. refuse to have sex with him there was a case where police beat a boy who was riding a skateboard on the wrong side of a road there was another case where a police officer actually body slam a nurse after she mouthed off to him so can you kind of put this into context i mean is this the l.a.p.d. culture is this what they're teaching or are these individual cops. it's easy to just blame this on individual cops but if you just look at the fact that none of these people i mean you probably ninety nine percent of the time we've got in l.a.p.d. are never disciplined for any of the things that you just mentioned i mean the man is being accused of sexually assaulting women and threatening them with jail time if they didn't comply with him that and his partner were that those accusations

were known about for two years before the l.a.p.d. really started investigating it i mean there is a there's there's a certain sense that they all tolerate officers who often abuse people and when you do that these officers stay on the street and there are a lot to do it again and again and again that any repercussions and that is institutional that's a serious cultural problem within the police department and we like to think that it no longer exists so that is a rugby king right but there's just so many keys of them in the past two years there's countless times where police have shot and killed on our people or spotty slammed people against laws like the nurse you just mentioned so i would definitely say that it is time that we look into these allegations and really start to consider whether you know this is a that is a cultural problem in trying to consider whether that lady is really tolerating this inside inside their staffs and if in a journalist running a college thank you for joining us with your opinions thank you well if you saw the

u.s. was susceptible to cyber attacks before gift ready for this a new intelligence assessment by the government is beginning to reveal the magnitude of cyber attacks and the countries responsible for them their report indicates that sustain hacks are a threat to both national security as well as economic competitiveness in the past the defense industry has worried about government agencies being targeted however it's private companies and financial institutions that are increasingly at risk representative mike rogers one of the men behind the defunct cyber bill legislation known as the notes that ninety five percent up. all private sector networks are vulnerable to hits many have already experienced an attack but are reluctant to step forward two stories now some estimates put the value of information stolen at around four hundred billion dollars per year on the other hand privacy advocates worry that this new focus on cyber protections might actually reignite the cyber

legislation debates that we've seen play out in congress representative rogers himself is expected to reintroduced cispa this week now speaking to the washington post anonymous official states the that energy finance information technology aerospace and automotive industries have all been hacked recently the main perpetrator of these cases of cyber espionage according to the report is china followed by russia israel and france china of course has been humanly denies such attacks but that's not stopping the u.s. from ramping up cyber security for his part president obama is said to be working on an executive order aimed at bolstering cyber security and is expected to announce it as early as this wednesday we'll keep you up to speed with this story as it continues to develop. a warning now to anyone planning to leave or enter the u.s. civil rights watchdog of the department of homeland security has ruled that searches and seizures of any and all electronic devices by customs and border patrol agents

are not a violation of a person's privacy the civil rights and civil liberties impact assessment has found that searches quote comply with the fourth amendment they also concluded that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of electronic devices would be operationally harmful without comment tent in other words contributing civil rights slash civil liberties benefits and here's the best part the searches are allowed to be completely suspicion lists and they apply to anyone within one hundred mile radius of u.s. borders so do you see that red line that goes all the way around the u.s. map well if you are within that zone like milwaukee or los angeles or seattle your cell phone your laptop and your other electronic devices can be searched without a cause. the d.h. us has ordered this privacy assessment back in two thousand and nine and it was expecting results within one hundred twenty days i think they meant one thousand two hundred days because that's how long it actually took for us to find the to get

these findings to discuss the privacy issues of this law i was joined earlier by kevin costello blogger at firedoglake well looks like the government would want to be able to get into anyone's electronic devices that they have been using this already and power at the border for quite some time now i guess particularly in the so-called post september eleventh attacks world the government has been constructing they just feel they have the ability to intrude on anybody in order to you know do whatever they want to on behalf of national security now lyster active allows border patrol agents to search and see the electronic possessions of travelers within one hundred mile radius of this border as i mentioned earlier but it doesn't define who a traveler is are not that i can find to any extent so according to the a.c.l.u. one hundred ninety million americans fall within this hundred mile radius does that

mean that any one of them can be searched. i think it's fair to be concerned that anybody who is willing will be searched or could be subject to an arbitrary search i think that what is really troubling about the two page executive summary which is actually the report the department of homeland security is playing a secrecy game here and they didn't release the actual impact assessment they just gave us a summary too to look at and there's no basis for us to understand how they came to these conclusions but the little that they do put down leads us to wonder. people at the border are being discriminated against is that an issue you acknowledge that people are complaining and so i think that this is a reality that people are being stopped and that they are being arbitrarily handled while there's also a lot of loopholes in this law that i was able to read into anyway authorities are

not allowed to discriminate against people by race or gender but they also don't need to have reason for searches they are supposed to adhered to federal standards when it comes to business secrets medical documents lawyer client interactions except but then again if they find criminal activity they don't have to prove they don't have to necessarily protect that information can you talk about a little bit more about these loophole and really does it make room for them to go about and search anything on anyone. well i think that we have to go individual by individual because there are going to be people that are coming through the border that government agents for the stuff the reason why i put it in those terms is just maybe put a face on it to say that the a.c.l.u. has a couple cases that they are pursuing in the courts against how people have been other devices have been taken from them so for example david house support network co-founder is an individual who had the donor lists for these people who are

donating to this group supporting a person who has helped a organization five allegedly providing information to wiki leaks and then there's another individual pascoe abby door a twenty six year old u.s. french dual citizen who they are defending in the courts because he had his electronic devices taken from him when he was at the border and this was mostly probably because of his nationality or fact he had been detained and held in the south. just consider the individuals here because i think these policies are being used on people at arbitrary basis and in the case of pascal his computer was actually stays for eleven days back in two thousand and ten and what they had found was a bunch of pictures were guarding hezbollah and it turns out that he's actually a student studying arabic studies in canada but another interesting point that i want to bring up is the d.h.s.s. said that one thousand of these electronic searches happened between two thousand

and eight and two thousand and nine but then they later relates to a report that said that five hundred five thousand five hundred of these searches happened between two thousand and eight and two thousand and ten so either the first calculation was wrong or the d.h.s.s. ramped up the search is five fold in a year what chad do you think is more likely. i mean it's tough for me to draw any conclusion because the department of homeland security is transparent so you know these figures who's to say that they're using different metrics in order to come up with these figures i guess until we can actually see the full report and we can actually have this supposed to watchdog produce the actual report that i think the public is entitled to see it's hard for me to talk about what they're officially concluding now as kevin go fellow blogger for firedoglake. president obama and

congress have vowed to make immigration reform a top priority this year included in the senate bipartisan reform an expansion to the guest worker program the u.s. has had a long history of guest worker programs which critics say exploit change labor and benefit only big businesses are teaser along the way now takes a look back at the history behind this program in spanish sounds means a man who works with arms and hands but in american lingo they are called lifesavers settle program brought millions of guest workers from mexico to the u.s. between one hundred forty two and one hundred sixty four when the sun's a key when you got here the first thing that would do is take off all your clothes that many americans know little about the nation's largest guest worker experiment bringing the d.d.t. . but i seduced at the border that was. then straits

everybody is. you know. people were treated like animals present day debate over immigration reform makes the story of the bra seto's increasingly relevant goes on pick crops across the u.s. during world war two he still helping fellow but i said i was collecting earnings they were owed from decades ago as the police. a thousand will soon be the this country the u.s. forgets that thanks to the hard work of immigrants it was able to win the war will have. yeah the cultural industry lobbied for the boss had a program arguing that world war two would bring labor shortages however historian and filmmaker gilbert gonzalez argues that farmers took advantage of desperate immigrants to bring down wages and stop union organizing in the fields they have one hundred forty strike team thirty there isn't one strike that occurs throughout the twenty two years later program it paralyzes the labor movement from your chair

in california to the confines of the south millions of guest workers came to work long hours and under brutal conditions in the one thousand nine hundred fifty s. and sixty's agriculture exploited this foreign workforce for their profit knowing that the brothels couldn't stand up for their rights they could be brought in they could be thrown out if they started organizing. so. as one person called it they were a grower during today a guest worker provision is a contentious portion of immigration reform president obama's proposal makes no mention of it but the bipartisan gang of eight in the senate are insisting on it there are all types of industries in our country which have used the work of immigrants every day to achieve the economic goals of those industries in the days of the dust settles employers routinely ignored regulations worker advocates point out that migrant laborers are still taken advantage of look at the conditions under

which i. live now conditions have not changed in over one hundred years at a time of mass deportations they continue to work or abuse it means to be seen if the us is doomed to repeat it starkie history in los angeles ramon the lindo archie . to a t.s.a. story now they've added yet another critic to a long list of people speaking out against the agency were known cellists albon gerhart is speaking out now against the t.s.a. after agents snapped his very rare cello into the cello was a one of a kind of it was broken and security staff buyer security staff in chicago's o'hare international airport as they examined the cases contents on february sixth of this year gerhardt was in route to the madison symphony orchestra to perform there in wisconsin the musician described the incident as quote an act of brutal and careless behavior gerhart says he suspects that t.s.a. agents performing the search put the cello back in its case carelessly and then

forced the case shut consequently snapping it now this isn't the first time musicians instrument has actually been destroyed back in two thousand and one we're now polish pianist christian zimmerman's piano was confiscated and destroyed at the j.f.k. international airport in new york because of quote a funny smelling glue this latest case serves as just another example of the t.s.a. causing someone or i guess in this case something to snap and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and for the latest information on the stories we covered in a few that we just didn't have time to get to check out our web site that's r t dot com slash usa and for the latest and greatest coming from my end of the world tweet me it's at meghan underscore lopez give me your story suggestions feedback and comments i'm always listening.